Word: dietl
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...seven weeks the Allies had been balked by a tall, lithe athlete of 49, whose starving troops call him "The Bull." Olympic athletes of 1936 remember him, Lieut. General Eduard Dietl, as organizer of the winter sports program at Garmisch-Partenkirchen. His division of mountain troops, which he trained himself and led, as he did all things, with fierce personal daring through the Carpathians in last autumn's Polish campaign, was bottled up when British destroyers and the battleship Warspite blasted into Narvik on April 12. Steely and aquiline, Bull Dietl is said to have gone aloft...
...proceeding northward overland from Namsos last week was 118 miles southwest of Narvik at Bodo (pop. 6,000), which German air bombs completely incinerated. There a Norse force and a few British survivors still blocked the way. Allied warships said they sank seven German transports trying to bring Bull Dietl reinforcements...
...have dragged for King Haakon. Nights were now only twilight and almost every day fresh blankets of spring snow fell to impede the progress of Allied and Norse troops seeking to wrest Narvik from the stubborn clutch of some 3,500 Austrian ski troops under General Eduard ("The Bull") Dietl, entrenched on towering Rombak Heights southeast of the town. Through the snow swirls, shielded more than blinded, came steady streams of Nazi planes to drop food, munitions, more men to the beleaguered invaders. They revived and reinforced a second Nazi contingent on the north side of Rombak Fjord, at Elvegardsmoen...
...through Björnfjell near the Swedish border, and preserve the ore railroad. The arrival at the border of 460 fugitive German "seamen" in civilian clothes, who said they were refugees from nine merchant ships sunk during the naval actions, betokened the plight of their soldier comrades under General Dietl, famed skier, organizer of winter sports at Garmwisch-Partenkirchen. The latter, called "The Bull" by his men (for his stubbornness), was said to have told his personal friend, Adolf Hitler, by radio telephone: "We have no ships. We have no artillery left. We have few anti-aircraft guns...
What happened to 1,500 men of General Dietl's original landing force became known last week. Retreating Norwegian troops tempted them to pursuit up the road to Tromsö, then cut off their retreat at the town of Gratangen, which was set afire. The Nazis took shelter in farmhouses, Norse sharpshooters picking them off when they stuck their heads out. It was such a trap as the Finns sprang repeatedly on whole divisions of Russians, and it worked as perfectly. Hungry, half-frozen, before week's end 850 survivors at Gratangen surrendered...